Aaron's Arrival in Ethiopia

My brother Aaron came to visit us for 10 days this month. We are so grateful that he came. Seeing family really helps us cope with being so darn far away from everyone! Also, it has been fun showing Aaron our lives here and seeing his reactions. He wrote a long thesis about his time here and is allowing us to share parts of his story with you all. We split it into two entries. We hope you enjoy!

Aaron’s Arrival in Ethiopia
After a mere 30+ hours of traveling and terrible jet lag, my trip from Seattle to Addis Ababa (via Philly, Paris, and Cairo) finally came to close and the beginning of my Ethiopian adventure was set to begin.

After arriving at 4:00am and sleeping for a few hours, I woke up and was ready to explore Addis. That day we took care of the essentials (i.e. exchanging money, grocery shopping, etc.), went through the Mercado (“the biggest market in the entire world”) with loads of people staring at us, and had an authentic Ethiopian dinner. I also had a chance to meet the fellow ex-pats (Andrew, Faith, and their daughter, Alea) that are working with Jeff and Erin for the year. They were on their way out of the country to deliver their second child. All-in-all, Addis was an interesting city, but, like most of my experiences in developing countries, I was excited to leave the urban setting for the rural lands. First, we headed to Wenchi.

Mt. Wenchi Crater Lake was a beautiful setting…there was a mountainous rim that formed the outline of the crater. Within the crater were many small villages and a grand lake. We hired a guide and horses to take us around the lake but only used the horses for the first half. As would be expected being the biggest of the three of us, I got the smallest horse. The big highlight of Wenchi was crossing the lake by boat and stopping at a little island in the middle. There was a church there that supposedly holds the Ark of the Covenant and has since it’s “erection in the late 1500’s.” It is pretty amazing that the building looks like it is only 10-20 years old and “has not had any repairs since it was originally erected.” It must be the special powers of the Ark.

On our way from Wenchi to Chiri, we picked up an Ethiopian couple that were also on their way to Jimma. Its funny how, coming from the American way of life, you don’t really think of things like getting motion sickness from having never before ridden in a car. Within the first half hour, during the straightest part of the drive, the girl we had picked up got sick 4 times. After pulling over 4 times in such a short time, we decided to keep powering through her upcoming vomits. As she and her boyfriend could not understand English, we each made a guess of how many times total she would get sick in the next 3 hours of the drive. Erin guessed 7, Jeff 8, and me 9. By the time we arrived in Jimma, she had thrown up 10 times. As we dropped them off in the center of town, after having driven them 3 and a half hours through 10 vomits, the guy asked us for some money. That slightly rubbed us the wrong way.

That evening we arrived at Lalmba, the health clinic in Chiri that Jeff and Erin are working at for a year. We were immediately greeted by at least ten of the orphans that Lalmba has taken in, some of the staff, and Carrole, the executive director of the organization. Jeff introduced me to all of the nurses. The highest ranked of them, Bezu (a health officer), told me that I look just like Jeff, but fatter. We laughed as Jeff told him that is not a nice thing to say where we come from. So, Bezu then said, “no, not fatter…obeser.”

We took it easy that night, having a very relaxed dinner, giving me the opportunity to start getting my bearings. I knew that night that I would like this place a great deal as it is an incredibly beautiful piece of property on top of a hill overlooking some amazing scenery.